The moorhens and swans did well out of me today, as I fed them while walking along the canal. Real St Francis of Assisi stuff. Unfortunately, Pod(cast) did not reward me…
I listened to a few episodes of a climate podcast that I had high hopes for. I won’t name it (though obvs I could, because, like, who even reads this?) because the point is broader than the failings (and they are failings) of a single podcast. It goes to the whole “climate podcast” genre, as far as I’ve encountered : as the late Charlie Kirk was wont to say – “prove me wrong.”
One guest just kept on blathering on about the importance of Connecting With Nature and how it could all be wonderful and – as per Rodney King – “why can’t we all just get along.” Their theory of change seemed to amount to “everyone should agree with me and my book, and then we hold hands and sing kumbaya and it will be great.”
Another podcast was by someone who took obvious delight in berating the “mainstream” NGOs for “selling out” and agreeing to 1.5 degrees as a target in order to keep their place in the room.
While this is ABSOLUTELY fair and correct (Naomi Klein bangs on about this) as analysis, I think it is a bit rich too. I have seen this person inaction. Sorry, I have seen this person in action. For all the fine talk of radical alternatives, I saw them treat a whole bunch of people as ego-fodder back in 2011 (they may in fact have been the inspiration – the final straw – for me inventing that term?)
It’s great to name shitty complicit behaviour by big NGOs for what it is. But if you yourself have never done a moment’s public reflection on why the heroic grassroots keep losing, and no reflection on how your ego needs mysteriously keep getting met in dreary meetings and rallies, then, um, maybe I can’t take you ALL that seriously? I didn’t finish the podcast, in part because the interviewer seemed to have no perspective for (or appetite for?) challenging this (he had also given the kumbaya guy a free pass.) I am not sure I will bother with any others here.
It occurred to me, as I walked up the hill – and this is banal and obvious, but most of my thoughts are – that one problem in having a decent podcast is that if you DO demand your interviewees face their wishful thinking/blind spots/evasions/mistakes, you quickly get a reputation for being “unfair” or “not a team-player” and your requests to other people for interviews will be declined or ignored because you have a reputation for not just asking softball/sycophantic questions. This is obviously, another mechanism of informational ghetto homeostasis and my gaia we are all totally doomed, aren’t we?
marchudson.net 
By gaia we are! I’m realising on the left there are many fairweather friends – who are very active on Palestine now but not supportive more generally. For instance Owen Jones and George Monbiot during the antisemitism smears of 2017-2019.
‘blathering on about the importance of Connecting With Nature and how it could all be wonderful’
Yup, yup, yup. Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is still a widespread theme of advocacy rhetoric written and spoken by staff and board members of ENGOs for nature, parks, wilderness, wildlife here in western North America.
When I stumbled into that movement in 1987 it was just about reaching its peak, and the theorizing notion went deeper over the next 6 – 8 years or so with a significant push to advocate for Arne Naess’s deep ecology ideology/creed/political philosophy as the ultimate way to achieve the necessary societal, and thus political change. Drew me in more than I care to remember.
A justifiable ecological philosophical perspective, but hugely lacking in terms of providing effective pragmatic political change theory/practices.
I cringe to this day in reflecting on my early 30s earnest investment in reading extensively on deep ecology. Yoiks!!
There’s a decent podcast, reviewed over on allouryesterdays.info – if you have a listen, let me know what you think